Data transmission is the conveyance of any kind of information from one space to another. Inherent with data transmission is the possibility that information may become corrupted once the information is transmitted. Encoding/decoding methods have been developed to detect and correct corrupted data in digital data streams or signals. The encoding method encodes the information to form encoded data. The encoded data is then transmitted over some channel. The decoding method receives the encoded data and decodes the encoded data. In order to accurately decode the encoded data, the decoding method must have the ability to detect and correct errors in the encoded data.
Unfortunately, decoding methods that detect and correct errors are typically quite complex and depend on the type of encoding method that is used to originally encode the information. Therefore, these complex decoding methods are not efficient when implemented on computing devices with limited memory and/or processing capabilities. In addition, for each type of encoded data that the computing device receives, a separate decoding method is needed.